


Little Mermaid

by theoreticalpixy



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: F/M, Recovery, stories as ciphers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-04
Updated: 2013-08-04
Packaged: 2017-12-22 08:50:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/911274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theoreticalpixy/pseuds/theoreticalpixy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They're like the story, she thinks, but like the story happy endings are hard.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Little Mermaid

She knew she wouldn’t get to keep him. 

She always knew. Always, always, always; like the story.

Once upon a time there was a little mermaid. She traded her fins for a prince and legs and turned to seafoam. Mermaids don’t belong in the world above. Love isn’t enough. There are prices.

Prices in blood and pain. Footsteps like knives and heads cut off. 

(The blood splatters her face before she understands what she’s seen. The red sticky substance not registering as what it is. She screams and runs and barely knows why. All the words slip out of her head.)

She likes the story version better. Pain for love, not pain for...well. Everything. For survival and death and punishment. Finnick never walked with knife pains, but he had to bow to the Capitol’s commands. Had to be used. Hurt and sent back to Annie with dead eyes. It always seemed their price.  They paid their dues to be together. As if the Arena was not punishment enough already. 

(She screams and cries for him when they hurt her. She cries when she sees him again, wrapped in his arms and sure that he is all she’ll ever need. She screams when she dreams of the most terrible things. His words help her scrub the horrible bits from her head. Pain and blood and screams and tears and why won’t it stop Finnick? I can’t make it stop. 

I’m here, you’re safe here, safe with me. Think of the sea, our little boat. Do you remember? Remember Annie, they can’t hurt us here.) 

She has always felt too much. 

You are a lover, child, such a tender heart in you, her grandmother warned.

(Finnick loves her anyway)

Don’t lose your heart foolishly the old sailors always warned. Don’t be the little mermaid, giving up everything, giving up the very sea that brings life. It will eat you up in vengeance. Gobble you whole. 

(Like the Capitol.)

Shhh don’t say those words. Dangerous words. Hush now, keep mending the nets.

She knew she couldn’t keep Finnick but she thought maybe.

Maybe.

Maybe it was all enough. Maybe there was enough blood that would save her his death. Like the version her grandmother tells. Whispered at night and secret. Not really a secret, most of the boys and girls have heard it, but no one ever tells it on the boats. 

And the little mermaid did not turn into seafoam, because there was love in her heart so great that she became a spirit of the sky. She watched over children, just like you, and brought good and joy to the people she cared for. And after a long time she earned her soul back. Nothing true and pure is lost forever, Annie. 

Nothing true is lost forever. She believed so fiercely in those words.

So why should Finnick become seafoam when he’d given so much already? Annie knows she’s no worthy prince, but she loves him as best she can. Which is more than the story could ever boast. That prince was foolish, he couldn’t see what the mermaid offered. But Annie saw, Annie knew. She loves Finnick with all her heart and then some. Even when she forgets, and she does forget so many things sometimes, she doesn’t forget him. She always knows what it means when his hand takes hers. 

(And their wedding. Oh, their wedding. She had forgotten how to dream of such things. But she had it; it may not have been home on the seaside but it was beautiful and real and how could anything bad have been ushered in from something so good?)

So if it still hurt to put herself back together it was okay. Because he was with her and his words and hands could do so much. Her beautiful steadfast mermaid. She could bear so many things with him at her side. Could help him bear his own weights in return. 

(The first time they lay together again is blissful. The plain room floats away as she’s lost in Finnick. Finnick made of salt and sea. Warmth and light and love. She’s home again against his body. When she drifts to sleep, tired and loved and whole, she can almost hear the waves in her head.)

There’s no one to help her now and it hurts. She knew she was never going to get to keep him. She feels she should have been more prepared for this. 

(She doesn’t scream anymore but she does cry. She cries with the doctor who tells her the baby in her stomach is a son. She cries with the counselor they make her see. Who comes to her cottage and asks her how she feels. Too much is what she feels. But she cries less each visit and Annie hopes that maybe her tears will run dry before her son is born.)

But she wasn’t ready; couldn’t be, they tell her. Poor mad Annie Cresta, she knows what they say about her. It’s not her fault she’s broken. 

It takes ten times as long to put yourself back together as it does to fall apart she tells them. Finnick understood. She could be better. Would be better. You can’t reach shore if you never start swimming. 

Swimming she could do.

When they place her son in her arms Annie cries again. But they are tears of relief, of joy. Pain leaves her body with each drop rolling down her cheeks.  She can’t find words but she hugs their child close to her chest and it feels like the shore is within reach. She can take care of their son the way she couldn’t take care of Finnick. She will keep him safe, so he may never feel the pains his parents bore. The Capitol is over now. There will be no arena to haunt her son. 

Back at home Annie holds her baby and sings sea songs to him. She takes him to the sea and as the waves roll in over her toes she whispers. 

There, there’s your father, he’s alive, he’s listening, he’s foam upon the waves.

She whispers stories and secrets to their little boy. Finnick is watching, he’s there, she knows it. Feels it, deep in her heart and in her little boy’s bright eyes. 

Don’t foresake the sea, it brings us life. Now Finnick is in the sea and it brings her greater joy.

Maybe he is a spirit of the air now, though Annie cannot fully see him as anything but of the sea. He is watching her and taking care of her. Of his son. She rocks the child to sleep in the shadows of the sunset. In the salty whisper of sea breeze. He sleeps sweetly, lulled by the soft shushing of waves. By his father. And when Annie climbs into her own bed, large and empty, it feels less so than each night before. She dreams of Finnick’s laugh, his smile and bright eyes.

When she wakes she swears she hears him in the wind. 

And she knows, more than before, that someday she will be seafoam too. Or a spirit of the sky or a soul; whatever Finnick is. After her son grows tall and strong and she grows old and less broken. Then she will join Finnick and everything will be okay. 

Because nothing true is ever really lost. 

And if Annie Cresta knows anything it is that surely she has loved him as true as any little mermaid ever loved. And he the same of her.

She doesn’t tell her son of the little mermaid. She tells him their story instead.

Once upon a time there was a mad girl and a brave boy and they lived in a terrible kingdom...


End file.
